Dare We Share Some Spooky Stories?

[Lilias]

[Valerian]

You’ve never liked the silence. Ever. At first you thought it was just something you were scared of, for no reason. But as you grew older, you realized that there was a reason. There had always been a reason.

You’ve always slept with your creaky ceiling fan running, no matter how cold it was. You’d take extra blankets, you’d shiver, but you’d never switch the creaky thing off. Because you knew how much you dreaded the silence.

Because you knew that once it was silent, you’d hear them.

At first, it had started out as soft hissing noises. You’d ignored it. But then you’d realized that it sounded like someone was whispering something to you. It took you time to decipher them. You finally did. You’d never forget that.

They had told you about the Underworld. Hell. The place where everyone went once they died. There was no heaven. There was only hell. They told you about the creatures there, how every monster you’d ever feared was real. They told you terrible things.

Then they told you how your grandfather’s soul was inching closer. To hell. To death.

You remembered being at your grandpa’s funeral the very next day, shaking, more out of fear than grief.

They were real. It was real.

Since then, you’ve never allowed the silence to envelop you while you slept. You’re scared you’ll hear them. The things they spoke about still gave you nightmares.

You’ve never slept in complete darkness either.

Because that’s when you see them.

[Spookie Monster]

Thank you very much, Lilias and Valerian!  Superb as always.

We're currently in the midst of the Fall Classic*, and my** team is in it, so I want to take this opportunity to talk about where baseball meets spooky.  There's plenty to choose from, of course: Baseball has more than its fair share of curses, jinxes, and haunted stadiums.  I've decided to pass along a tale about perhaps the only thing scarier for a player than a World Series game that goes on and on and on and on and on: Having a ghost crawl into bed with you.


Ji-Man Choi is the latest baseball player to be haunted by a ghost at Milwaukee's Pfister Hotel

Angels first baseman Ji-Man Choi was asked how he slept.

"Oh," he said, shaking his head.  "Not good.  Not good."

Choi felt a ghost on Sunday night.

The Angels are staying at the Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, a site several Major League players have previously believed to be haunted.  Former Brewers center fielder Carlos Gomez once claimed to hear voices at the resort, then watched his iPod go haywire after stepping out of the shower and scampered out of the room.  Adrian Beltre's TV and air conditioner turned on and off (certainly ghosts and not faulty wiring) and Brendan Ryan saw a "moving light" go through the room.

Choi, a rookie out of South Korea, didn't know about the hotel's history.  But he said he felt a spirit in his bed during the team's first night there, and it wasn't the first time.

"I've seen ghosts plenty of times," Choi said through his interpreter, Jae Park.

The first time, Choi said, was shortly after back surgery in 2011.  He felt a spirit on his chest that awoke him, and then he felt the bed slump.

"I was scared at first," Choi said, "so I didn't want to open my eyes.  I dealt with that a lot more times after that."

Another time, Choi claims to have been laying on his side when he felt a spirit crawling up behind him, then felt a hug and heard some murmuring in his ear.  Other South Korean Minor League players, the only ones he could communicate with at the time, claimed to have felt the same thing.

Choi always has a hard time sleeping in hotel beds.  When he's comfortable, "It means there's a ghost," he said.  That, Choi claims, was the case on Sunday.  He was asked what he thinks about spending two more nights at the same Pfister Hotel where he felt that spirit.

"I hope it's a girl," Choi said, bursting in laugher.  "Nah, nah.  Just kidding, you know. ... I've dealt with it so many times, I don't really care anymore."


Losing on a walk-off homer after eighteen innings... I mean, come on, now...

Spel


* If you don't know what the Fall Classic is... well, it's just a nickname for the World Series.  If you don't know what the World Series is... well, it's the Major League Baseball best-of-seven championship series of games.  If you don't know what Major League Baseball is... well, it's the most significant professional baseball league in the United States and Canada.  If you don't know what baseball is... well, it's where billionaires pay millionaires to throw balls, catch balls, hit balls with sticks, touch people with balls, touch things with balls, nod their heads, shake their heads, run around, shout, kick dirt, and spit.  And if you don't know what balls are... well, you're on the right site to find out!

** Team may or may not actually belong to me.

[Spookie Monster]

Once more I'm going to go "multimedia" (I use quotation marks because I'm old and I'm still slightly suspicious of cyber-talkies).  This time I bring you the rather disturbing segment of the 1985 claymation film The Adventures of Mark Twain that distills Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger.  "Life itself is only a vision, a dream."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpaRouocBes


The Witches' Sabbath is ready to pounce.  Do you have a spooky story to share?

Spel

[Lilias]

[Valerian]

[Lilias]

[Valerian]

All Along the Wall, another chilling webcomic from Emily Carroll.

[Lilias]

[Lilias]

[Spookie Monster]

Thank you very much indeed, Lilias and Valerian!  A veritable onslaught of creepiness!

Just as the Season of the Witch was destined to entrance us, so too was it destined to depart.  Having greeted this year's round of storytelling with the crash of American Airlines Flight 191, I'm now going to bid farewell to it with a return to that topic.  As I mentioned, and as Valerian noted above, David Booth's premonition of a plane crash wasn't the only spooky thing that happened in connection with the ill-fated flight.  Please allow me to bring you two more curiosities; the first concerns the experiences of the Bionic Woman herself, Lindsay Wagner.


The Flash

Among those who were supposed to be onboard Flight 191 were Lindsay Wagner, star of the television series The Bionic Woman, and her mother.

"My mother and I were booked on that American Airlines DC-10 that crashed shortly after takeoff at the Chicago airport," she said.  "But ten minutes before we were due to get on I had a psychic flash that warned me of disaster.

"I begged my mother to change our flight and an hour later we learned that all 271 people onboard had been killed.  I haven't doubted a single premonition since."


And one more...

Spel

[Spookie Monster]

Not everyone was as fortunate as Lindsay Wagner and her mother, naturally.  The victims included an author, Judith Wax...


A Fear of Airplanes

Author Judith Wax was one of many who perished in the crash of American Airlines Flight 191.  She'd been bound to Los Angeles to promote her new book, Starting in the Middle, about middle-aged life.  A remark that's unsettling on retrospect can be found in Starting in the Middle, where Wax describes her fear of flying: "When the job required travel, I developed such a fear of airplanes my head trembled from takeoff to landing..."

This remark appears on page 191, of course.


Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt...

Spel

[Spookie Monster]

Although our round has come to an end, I'm going to leave you with one final story so frightening, so shocking, so hair-raising that I am in fact hesitant to post it.  Thoughts about the single-minded monstrosity featured therein will haunt you day and night; in comparison, Michael Myers is a mere clown, Jason Voorhees a mama's boy, Freddy Krueger a sweet dream, Chucky child's play.  If you don't return next year, I'll have to assume that you died of fright after hearing this terrifying tale of terrible terror.  (Or perhaps that you were... driven nuts?)


Police in Germany rescue man being chased by baby squirrel

German police have rescued a man after he called for help saying a baby squirrel would not leave him alone.

Emergency services received a call on Thursday from the man, who claimed he was being chased down the street by the tiny animal.

Police in Karlsruhe said the unnamed man called them in desperation after he was unable to shake off the small rodent.

Officers sent a patrol car out to investigate and arrived to find the chase still in full flow.  But the drama ended suddenly when the squirrel, apparently exhausted by its exertions, lay down abruptly and fell asleep.

Officers took pity on the animal, which had probably become separated from its mother.  Police said it likely targeted the man because it was in search of a new home.

"It often happens that squirrels which have lost their mothers look for a replacement and then focus their efforts on one person," said Christina Krenz, a police spokeswoman.

She said the animals could be "very persistent, not just running behind someone, but entirely fixated on them.  It can be pretty scary.  The man didn't know what to do and so he called the police.  He was certainly feeling a bit threatened."

But police on the scene appeared more amused than alarmed.

"A squirrel will be our new mascot, it will be christened Karl-Friedrich," said the police write-up.  "The squirrel has fallen asleep in fright."

Krenz said: "It was just a bit of fun.  The officers thought up a name that would suit the baby squirrel."

Officers took the sleeping Karl-Friedrich into police custody, and then to an animal rescue centre, where it was said to be doing well.

Krenz said the rescue centre was looking after two other abandoned baby squirrels brought in on the same day for similar reasons, though theirs was the only case in which police have had to intervene.


And the inevitable end has arrived.  Thank you again, Lilias, Valerian, CaptainErotica, QuackKing, and Oniya: Maybe it is true that we can't choose where we're going, but no journey can be all bad when it's passed with such fine companions.  I hope that the thrills have chilled you and that the chills have thrilled you.  I hope, too, that your winding road leads you right back here when harvest time has once more come.

Spel

[EnchantedDream218]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-qZike-h6k&t=2229s